Silverlight Developers Guide to PDC09

The 2009 edition of the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference, affectionately known as PDC09, is next week. If you share my interest with Silverlight and related technologies, the list below should help provide some guidance to getting the most out of the event.

First let’s look at the published content plan:

Workshops

Pre-conference deep dive all-day training events focused on a single topic.

• Windows 7 Developer Boot Camp – Learn about Windows 7 from some of the top Windows 7 engineers. Hopefully you already registered because this one is sold out.
• Getting the Most out of Silverlight 3 – The posted info and title sells this workshop short. I would have called this Applied Silverlight or Silverlight form the trenches, you can hear more about in this video. You can still register if you haven’t yet.

Sessions

Here we find the meat of the conference, the sessions. You can find them listed on the site in schedule order, search by tag, add to outlook, or even by Excel spreadsheet. The site is Mobile device ready, too.

Below I’ve picked out a few of the session that caught my eye:

Tuesday

• Future Directions for C# and Visual Basic
• How Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Was Built with Windows Presentation Foundation 4
• Managing Development to Inspire Innovation and Create Great User Experiences
• Microsoft Expression Blend 3 for Developers: Tips, Tricks and Best Practices
• Advanced Graphics Functionality Using DirectX
• Windows Touch Deep Dive
• Advanced Windows Presentation Foundation Application Performance Tuning and Analysis
• Building Sensor- and Location-Aware Applications with Windows 7 and .NET Framework 4
• SketchFlow: Prototyping to the Rescue

Wednesday

• Microsoft Silverlight Roadmap and Futures
• Developers on Better Design, User Experience and Why It Matters
• ASP.NET MVC 2: Ninjas Still on Fire Black Belt Tips
• Media Foundation: Supporting Hardware Codecs and Cameras
• Mastering WPF Graphics and Beyond
• Should I Use Silverlight, MVC, and Web Forms for Web User Interface Development?
• Modern 3D Graphics Using Windows 7 and Direct3D 11 Hardware
• Networking and Web Services in Microsoft Silverlight
• Advanced Topics for Building Large-Scale Applications with Microsoft Silverlight

Thursday

• Microsoft Silverlight 3: Advanced Performance and Profiling Techniques
• Developer Patterns to Integrate Microsoft Silverlight 3.0 with Microsoft SharePoint 2010
• Silverlight Development Tools – Picking the Right Ones
• Embodiment: The Third Great Wave of Computing Applications
• Windows Presentation Foundation 4 Plumbing and Internals
• Building Extensible Rich Internet Applications with the Managed Extensibility Framework
• Building Amazing Business Applications with Microsoft Silverlight and Microsoft .NET RIA Services
• DirectX11 DirectCompute
• Multi-Touch on Microsoft Surface and Windows 7 for .NET Developers
• Custom Behaviors for Advanced Microsoft Silverlight UI Effects
• Developing Testable Silverlight Applications
• Deep Dive on Bing Maps Silverlight Control
• XAML Futures in Microsoft .NET Framework, Microsoft Silverlight and Tools

Events

With all these people in the same place at one time, you know someone is going to throw a party.  Here are the big public events going on during the week. There’s more that require invites or just a little careful nosing around.

 

Monday

• Visual Studio Documentary Screening – The behind-the-scenes story of how Visual Studio came to be, 6:30-7:30pm
• Party with Palermo – Free to attend, Free drinks, Free swag, eat before you come… 7-10pm
• PDC09 Tweetup – Go beyond the 140 characters and talk to your tweeps in real-life, 7:30pm

Tuesday

• Meet the WPF Team – .NET 4 Beta 2 is out and the WPF team wants to talk, 12:30-2pm
• Partner Expo Reception – Free drinks in the LACC, 5:30-9pm
• INETA Community Roundtable – peek behind the curtain and get a glimpse into the future… of community, 6 – 7pm

Wednesday

• Ask The Experts – Ask the people who make the products about the products in the LACC, 5:30-7pm
• Geekfest – Party On at the LACC, 7-9pm
  • Iron Bartender – Robots vs. Humans! Check out the DrinkTendr, 8pm
  • .NET Solution Game Show – Win prizes for participating in the Game Show, 8 – 8:45pm
• The Underground @ PDC – Conga Room and a ScottGu keynote means good fun, 7pm-1am

Thursday

• Time to sleep, fly home or hang out in the hotel bar – your choice

Social Media

• Twitter
  • PDC09 – official account with all the news
  • PDC09 Twibbon – show your pdc pride
  • Silverlighters At PDC09 – a list of all the Silverlight people who will be at PDC09.
    
    If you’re not on the list, let me know I’ll add you. Must love Silverlight, or at least like it a lot.
• Flickr tag – pdc09
• Facebook PDC Fan Page

And More Stuff

• The Devil’s Field Guide to PDC – if you’ve never been to PDC, the Spider King has you covered
• Attendee Directory – see who else is going to PDC (and wants you to know)
• PDC Art – blog banners and wallpaper
• Channel 9 Learning Center – Get a head start on some of the technologies covered at PDC

 

And remember this post is just covering the material that’s already public, we haven’t let out everything out of the bag yet.  Keep an eye on the PDC09 site to stay in the know.